Terrorism's next wave

Nerve gas and germs are the new weapons of choice

BY DAVID E. KAPLAN

Jeff Gordon thought he had seen it all. A veteran IRS investigator, Gordon's
job since 1988 had been to probe threats and assaults against his fellow
agents. There was no shortage in recent years--stabbings, fires, mortar attacks,
and big unexploded bombs outside IRS offices in Los Angeles and Reno, Nevada.
But in the first months of this year, Gordon found himself working on the
strangest case of his career. From an informant, he had learned of a Portland,
Ore., man named James Dalton Bell. Bell owed some $30,000 in back taxes and
served as a juror in a local "common law court." Dozens of these self-appointed
tribunals have issued "fines" and even death sentences against public officials.

Bell was also active in antigovernment forums on the Internet, where he had
posted a dark scheme threatening murder of troublesome federal agents.
Participants could send encrypted messages to each other, Bell proposed,
offering donations to whoever "predicted" how long a targeted official would
live. The winner, presumably the assassin, would be rewarded with electronic
fund transfers from anonymous donors, he suggested.

Gordon checked further. Bell, it turned out, was an electronics engineer
at a nearby circuit board manufacturer. He was also an MIT-educated chemist
who had been arrested eight years earlier for making methamphetamine, but
pleaded guilty to a lesser charge. According to court records, Bell had once
told a friend: "The first thing to remember is: Never make a chemist angry
at you."

In February, the IRS docked Bell's wages and seized his 10-year-old car.
Inside the vehicle, Gordon found instructions for making bombs and molotov
cocktails. There was also far-right literature, a printout listing large
amounts of cyanide, and detailed information on fertilizer, a key ingredient
in the Oklahoma City bomb. But with no evidence that Bell had hurt anyone,
Gordon could not move.

A burning stench. Four weeks later, on a Monday morning in March,
IRS officials encountered a terrible nose-burning stench as they arrived
at their building in Vancouver, the Portland suburb where Bell lived.
Investigators traced the smell to a welcome mat dosed with propanethiol.
The chemical is used by utilities in minuscule concentrations to give natural
gas its noticeable smell. "It's Bell," Gordon told his boss. "I'm sure of
it." Bell had attempted twice to buy propanethiol from a chemical-supply
company in Milwaukee, Gordon then learned. Worried that the stink bomb was
a trial run for something much worse, on April 1, authorities raided Bell's
home. They seized five computers and three semiautomatic assault rifles,
then opened his garage door. Before them stood dozens of containers filled
with chemicals. There were volatile solvents, explosives ingredients, sodium
cyanide, nitric acid, and diisopropyl fluorophosphate--one of several ingredients
that, if properly mixed, form nerve gas--all in a residential neighborhood.
"The level and type of chemicals were extremely unusual," said Leroy Loiselle,
who managed the cleanup for the Environmental Protection Agency. "You don't
need nitric acid to keep aphids off your flowers."

On Bell's computers, Gordon found two other items: the names and home addresses
of over 100 public officials--IRS employees, FBI agents, local police
officers--and a 169-page document, The Terrorist's Handbook, with
detailed instructions for making chemical weapons and high explosives. Bell's
friends told investigators that he had tried using green beans to make botulin
toxin, which causes botulism, and that he claimed to have successfully made
sarin, the nerve gas used by Japanese cultists in their 1995 attack on the
Tokyo subway.

Bell was arrested. In July he pleaded guilty to charges of obstruction of
IRS agents and use of a false Social Security number, and also admitted to
the stink bomb attack and the cyberassassination scheme. He faces up to eight
years in prison and $500,000 in fines. Bell declined to comment, but he contended
earlier that he is merely "a chemical hobbyist" and the assassination scheme
only an abstract proposal. "I'm a talker, not a doer," he said. The IRS's
Jeff Gordon remains wary. According to court records, after his arrest Bell
boasted to a friend that police never found his most dangerous chemical weapons.
Gordon believes they could include a secret stockpile of sarin.

New generation. Characters like James Dalton Bell are giving federal
officials fits these days. Bell, they believe, is one of a new generation
of tinkerers and technicians, of college-educated extremists threatening
to use biological, chemical, or radiological weapons to achieve their goals.
Since the Aum cult's Tokyo nerve gas attack, FBI officials say the number
of credible threats to use these weapons has jumped from a handful in 1995,
to 20 last year, to twice that number this year. Among the incidents was
the 1995 mailing of a videotape to Disneyland, showing two hands mixing chemicals
and a note threatening an attack on the theme park. Despite a major
investigation, the sender was never caught. Just last April someone sent
a petri dish labeled anthrax, an animal disease deadly to humans, to the
B'nai B'rith headquarters in Washington, D.C. That proved to be a hoax.

But other threats appear to be quite real. Four militia members in Minnesota
were convicted recently of planning to assassinate federal agents with a
biological toxin. In Ohio in 1995, a white supremacist pleaded guilty to
wire fraud in illegally obtaining three vials of bubonic plague bacteria.
Investigators have found biochemical agents in the hands of political extremists,
extortionists, murderers, and the mentally ill. U.S. News has learned
that the FBI has 50 current investigations of individuals suspected of using
or planning to use radiological, biological, or chemical agents. Bureau officials
say a major attack in the United States no longer seems unlikely. "The consensus
of people in the law enforcement and intelligence communities is that it's
not a matter of if it's going to happen, it's when," warns
Robert Blitzer, head of the FBI's terrorism section. "We are very concerned."

To prepare, federal agencies have scrambled to set up new counterterrorism
strike forces (story, Page 32). Behind all this is the very real fear that
the world has entered a new stage in terrorism. Widespread technical education
and high-tech communications have vastly increased the number of people with
knowledge of how to synthesize chemicals and culture bacteria. Books and
videos on creating these substances--and turning them into weapons--are now
available on the Internet, at gun shows and survivalist fairs, and through
the mail.

While its effects would be the most destructive, a nuclear incident is actually
the least likely scenario, according to security experts. More likely, they
say, would be a biological weapon attack; a chemical attack is the next likely
possibility. The impact could range from the poisoning of an individual to
sophisticated attempts at mass murder. So far, the majority have been limited
efforts by loners or small groups. Most worrisome to officials is the possible
involvement of more established, state-sponsored terrorist organizations--such
as Hezbollah--with international reach.

While the number of terrorist attacks, both in the United States and abroad,
has gone down since the end of the cold war, there is a flip side. Individual
acts themselves have grown more deadly, as illustrated by the Oklahoma City
and World Trade Center bombings. In its annual terrorism report issued last
April, the State Department sees a trend "toward more ruthless attacks on
mass civilian targets" and the use of more powerful weapons.

Threshold crossed. Until this decade, biological and chemical weapons
were the province of superpowers or renegade states like Iraq and North Korea.
But all that changed with Aum Supreme Truth, an obscure sect of New Age fanatics
based at the foot of Mount Fuji, 70 miles outside Tokyo. Recent court testimony
from sect members shows how the cult's young scientists produced not only
anthrax and botulin toxin but also various nerve agents, including the sarin
used on Tokyo's subway. Later attacks were planned for New York and Washington,
D.C.

Still, it is one thing to produce deadly agents and another to use them
effectively. Aum's attack killed only 12 people of the thousands in the subway
system, and on seven other occasions, attempted Aum attacks were dogged by
equipment failures and human error. "Trying to produce 100,000 casualties
is much more difficult than is often stated," observes Jonathan Tucker of
the Monterey Institute of International Studies. Tucker notes that problems
abound with delivery systems, meteorological conditions, and the agents
themselves. Still, he warns that even crude weapons can easily cause mass
disruption. Aum's nerve gas, for example, was full of impurities, yet it
sent thousands to the hospital.

What worries police is growing evidence that others share similar ambitions.
In 1993, two years before the Aum attack, Canadian border agents stopped
an American electrician named Thomas Lavy and searched his car. They found
four guns, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, 13 pounds of gunpowder, neo-Nazi
literature, and $80,000 in cash. Lavy also had recipes for biological and
chemical weapons and a plastic bag filled with white powder. Had the agents
opened the bag, they likely would have died of respiratory failure and paralysis.
Tests showed the substance to be ricin, a lethal toxin extracted from the
castor bean plant. (Ricin, dabbed on a tiny pellet fired from an umbrella-gun,
was used by Soviet agents to murder a Bulgarian in London in 1978.) The poison
is 6,000 times more toxic than cyanide, and there is no antidote. Lavy had
a quarter pound of the stuff.

In 1995, a man named Larry Wayne Harris was arrested after he obtained vials
of the bacteria that cause bubonic plague (Page 28). Harris is an Ohio
microbiologist and recent member of the white supremacist Aryan Nations.
He says his friends will strike at government officials with biochemical
weapons, if provoked. "If they arrest a bunch of our guys, they get a test
tube in the mail," he told U.S. News. And, he says, far worse could
come. "How many cities are you willing to lose before you back off?" he asks.
"At what point do you say: `If these guys want to go off to the Northwest
and have five states declared to be their own free and independent country,
let them do it'?" Authorities take Harris's comments seriously.

The recipes for such poison cocktails are available from underground publishers
and on the Internet. One popularizer is an Arkansan named Kurt Saxon. Through
books and videotapes, Saxon has been putting out ricin recipes for at least
nine years. Convinced that the U.S. will be invaded and that the federal
government can't be trusted to defend the country, he has fashioned various
homemade explosives and poisons, including cyanide grenades and ricin
applicators. In one segment of a $19.95 video, Saxon performs like a sinister
Julia Child, blending salt water and solvents with castor beans. ("Pour in
about 4 ounces of acetone," he says, "and shake it up nice.") "Uncle Fester,"
another near-legendary figure in the chem-bio underground, has authored such
family classics as Silent Death,Improvised Explosives, and
a guide to methamphetamine and LSD manufacture. Fester claims degrees in
chemistry and biology, and his Silent Death describes how to produce
poison gas, botulin and shellfish toxins, and ricin.

Similarly, entire manuals for making homemade explosives--TNT, plastic,
napalm--can be downloaded from the Net, as well as plans for building triggers,
fuses, and timers. At least 11 online vendors offer books with recipes on
biological or chemical weapons, including Silent Death and Kurt Saxon's
The Poor Man's James Bond. All are based in the United States. Adding
to the problem, many of the chemicals used to make nerve gas and other agents
have perfectly legitimate uses and are readily available. "The genie has
always been out of the bottle," says one intelligence analyst. "People are
just discovering it."

The genie is also loose in the Middle East. According to intelligence sources,
notebooks and computer files recently seized from Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed
Islamic militia, contain information on how to produce chemical agents. Hezbollah
has also taken delivery of protective gear, including gas masks and bodysuits,
and obtained Katyusha rockets able to deliver chemical warheads to Israel
from their base in Lebanon. Hezbollah's interests are shared by at least
one other Islamic terrorist, Ramzi Yusef, a trained engineer and reputed
mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Yusef's organization
researched making sarin and reportedly planned to assassinate President Clinton
in the Philippines with phosgene gas. The trade center bombers also packed
cyanide into the charge that rocked the building; the chemical apparently
evaporated in the explosion.

Some analysts believe there have been other, unnoticed, attacks in the United
States. "It's almost certain there have been uses of biological agents that
have gone undetected," says Seth Carus, a proliferation expert at the National
Defense University. "Most cases are known because they came to the attention
of law enforcement through informants, not because of medical authorities."
Health officials, for example, were mystified by a mass outbreak of salmonella
poisoning in Oregon in 1984. The cause--an attack by a nearby religious
sect--went undetected until the cult's demise a year later.

Exotic poisons are attracting not only terrorists but also murderers and
extortionists. Several recent trials have featured ricin as a murder weapon.
Product tamperers, too, are increasingly turning to biological agents. Says
Lori Ericson of Kroll Information Services: "We're seeing E. coli,
cholera, salmonella, HIV." In one British case, microbiologist Michael
Just threatened to contaminate the products of five food companies with
dysentery-causing bacteria. To make his point, he sent the firms test tubes
filled with the pathogen.

Society can likely tolerate the occasional murderer or extortionist wielding
biological or chemical weapons. The greater challenge undoubtedly will come
from those with broader grievances, from terrorists steeped in extremism
and political hatred. Perhaps scariest of all are the criminally insane,
who may bring technical ability, but little judgment, to their homemade
laboratories. Last April, authorities raided the house of one Thomas Leahy
in Janesville, Wis. Leahy, who takes medication for schizophrenia, was obsessed
with creating "killer viruses" to stop his enemies, both real and imagined,
according to police. He pleaded guilty to possessing ricin, but a search
of his home also found animal viruses and vaccines, staph bacteria culture,
fungicides, insecticides, hypodermic needles, and gas masks. As Leahy reportedly
told his wife, you can "never have too many poisons."

Everyone gets into the terrorism game

Too many SWAT teams spells confusion

BY DAVID E. KAPLAN

In 1995, Bill Clinton signed a presidential directive stating that the nation
has "no higher priority" than stopping terrorists who have weapons of mass
destruction. Congress responded with new laws and allocated more than a billion
dollars in support. The result has been an extraordinary proliferation of
counterterrorism programs, making this one of the few areas of rapid growth
in the federal budget. But in the rush to respond, say critics, government
agencies have failed to coordinate their efforts, and no one is even tracking
how much taxpayer money is being spent.

According to a September report by the General Accounting Office, more than
40 federal agencies have roles in combating terrorism. All of them appear
eager to gobble up the new funding. Among the big winners is the Pentagon,
which is getting $52 million to train local officials to cope with chemical,
nuclear, and biological attacks. Other agencies have set up units inspired
by NEST, the U.S. Department of Energy's Nuclear Emergency Search Team, begun
in the 1970s to thwart nuclear extortionists. The FBI has added DEST, its
new Domestic Emergency Support Team, and the State Department now runs FEST,
the Foreign Emergency Support Team. The Public Health Service is busily planning
MMSTs, or Metropolitan Medical Strike Teams, for 100 cities. And on Energy
Department drawing boards are plans for BEST, a Biological Emergency Search
Team, and CEST, its chemical counterpart. (Critics contend that the Energy
Department lacks both expertise and a mandate to deal with biological and
chemical weapons, but that has not stopped it from seeking funds.) And if
an emergency is big enough, one can always call in the Marines, who have
formed their own $10 million Chemical Biological Incident Response Force.

More shoe leather. Among the biggest beneficiaries is the FBI, which
has seen its counterterrorism budget nearly triple to $243 million since
1994. Bureau officials vow to "double the shoe leather" of agents working
on chemical and biological terrorism and are outfitting their elite Hostage
Rescue Team with $3.3 million worth of gas masks and protection suits. The
bureau also wants to build a multimillion-dollar Level 3 biolab, a tightly
sealed facility that would permit work with many of the world's deadliest
pathogens. Some experts note that the Army and the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention already have more than a dozen Level 3 labs; the bureau says
it can best conduct forensic investigations in its own facility.

The private sector is cashing in as well. Contractors are arranging much
of the Pentagon's $52 million local training program, while millions more
are available for research and development. "It's the latest gravy train
for consultants," says Larry Johnson, a terrorism consultant.

Even the toughest critics acknowledge that many of the new programs are needed.
For example, they agree that the training of local emergency workers to deal
with a chemical or biological attack is long overdue. The problem, they say,
is that the various programs have grown so quickly that coordination and
oversight have yet to catch up. A classified study this year for the CIA
and Energy Department calls for a national response program to deal with
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, directed by the White House. "The
system is not well organized at all," says former CIA head James Woolsey,
one of the study group's co-chairs.

One sign of the lack of oversight can be seen at the Office of Management
and Budget, the White House agency charged with managing the federal budget.
An OMB guide lists over 600 areas of specialization by the agency's staff,
including entries for Micronesia and marine mammals. Yet nowhere is there
an analyst tracking the budget for counterterrorism, a national security
priority. "It's not something we have a hard number for," says an OMB analyst.

The rapid expansion of programs--likely to cost billions of dollars overall--has
left some observers dismayed. "It was not our intent to create this thing,"
says John Sopko, who as deputy chief counsel to Sen. Sam Nunn played a key
role in drafting legislation to respond to the new terrorism. "We did not
want a massive entitlement program for counterterrorism."